Sordid marital drama makes for a searing tale of deceit and manipulation.
A 30-something’s seemingly perfect marriage hides secrets and simmering hostility in Sway’s thriller.
Newlywed Linley Gunn happily leaves her job at a New York publishing house to live in LA with her husband, Dorian. He’s a mega-rich former Wall Streeter who’s now working in the wellness industry. He also has a prenup stipulating that the marriage will be terminated with a $2 million settlement if Linley doesn’t bear a child within four years. Three years in, she still isn’t pregnant and not sure if she wants to be; Dorian has turned cold and now apparently prefers porn to his wife. He also has his eyes glued to Ana, the young, newly hired maid. Linley wants out of the marriage, but she feels that $2 million isn’t enough; she wants to help her parents, who lost their fortune to a shady investor. While she’s already convinced that Dorian’s porn-watching constitutes cheating, an affair with Ana would, per the prenup, leave Linley with much more. It’s not long before things turn exceedingly complicated—and homicidal. Sway masterfully takes readers into the mindset of an unhappy housewife—nonconfrontational Linley believably alternates between quietly stewing over Dorian’s callousness and sadly blaming herself for being unable to conceive. With pithy writing, the author gleefully layers on the melodrama, from the murky pasts of Dorian, Linley, and Ana to intrigues involving Ana’s physically abusive boyfriend Hector and Jarrad, the handsome gardener whom Linley fancies. Linley, however, isn’t easy to relate to; she comes from wealth, knowingly signed a ridiculous prenup, and scoffs at Dorian for “perving” over Ana as she herself ogles Jarrad throughout the story (“Speaking of wild, that’s how my hormones are reacting to seeing Jarrad shirtless”). Still, the novel’s latter half picks up considerably and offers compelling insights into Ana and Jarrad, who occasionally take the narrative reins. Shocking turns beget an unforgettable ending, promising a sequel to follow.
Sordid marital drama makes for a searing tale of deceit and manipulation.Pub Date: March 16, 2025
ISBN: 9798314296295
Page Count: 225
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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